Presses, such as web-fed presses, typically have a plurality of printing units arranged one after another. A printing material is moved successively through the various printing units in order to print the printing material. For half-tone overprinting, four printing units are generally provided with one of the process colors black, cyan, magenta and yellow being applied to the printing material in each printing unit. In web-fed presses, each printing unit typically comprises two printing-unit assemblies. The upper side and the underside of the printing material are printed at the same time by these printing-unit assemblies. Each of the printing-unit assemblies comprises a form cylinder, on which a printing plate is clamped for the purpose of printing. If, for example, a production change is carried out on the press, then it is necessary, inter alia, to remove an old, used printing plate from the form cylinder and to mount a new printing plate. In such a case, the removed printing plate is fed into a printing plate cartridge associated with the printing-unit assembly. The new printing plate to be mounted is also kept ready in the printing plate cartridge.
A printing plate cartridge for a press is disclosed in DE 102 38 107 A1. This printing plate cartridge has a shaft or old compartment for holding a used printing form to be removed and a shaft or a new compartment for holding a new printing form to be mounted on the respective form cylinder. With this device, a used printing form or printing plate removed from the form cylinder is fed into the printing plate cartridge. A new printing plate is removed and is fed to the form cylinder, via a side surface of the printing plate cartridge. The removal of a used printing plate from the printing plate cartridge and the feeding of a new printing plate into the printing plate cartridge by an operator are carried out via the same side surface.